Now if you would please take
your Bible, turn to the 2nd chapter of 1st
Corinthians, Our purpose tonight is to read
the second chapter of 1 Corinthians. As we read it, speak to various
issues as they arise. But I'd like also to tie this
in with what we were looking at this morning in Jeremiah 50
and verse 20. There it talked about God not
finding any iniquity in Israel and no perverseness in Jacob.
Then it spoke in the closing phrase of that verse, of those
people whom God reserves. Let me flip over there and read
you the statement so I won't mess it up. Let's see. Oh, I
still got my marker. Let me read you the statement. In those days and in that time,
in the gospel day, the day of Christ, says the Lord, the iniquity
of Israel shall be sought for, there shall be none. Not because
there isn't any, but because it's under the blood. And the
sins of Judah, they shall not be found. Now this phrase. For
I will pardon them whom I reserve. I'll pardon them whom I reserve. I want to add a footnote to that
last phrase, those whom God has said to reserve for himself. Scripture uses that same word
in the past tense in Romans chapter 11. Long about verse 4 or 5,
where Elijah is complaining that he's the only person left in
the whole nation that fears God, God responded to his prophet
by saying, I have reserved to myself 7,000 men that have not
bowed the knee to Baal. It's those people that God speaks
of as he has reserved them to himself. That's a special word,
and there's a verse right close by in chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians
that we'll look at in just a moment. But before we start, I guess
I ought to turn this stuff on. We'll bow together in prayer. Lord, again this Lord's Day, we come to this book, this Bible, this Word of
God, unlike any other book in all the world, a book written by numerous persons,
but the Word is all yours, God's Word, the revelation of our blessed
Savior, the Lord Jesus. Dear Father, we cast ourselves
upon your mercy to us in Christ and beg that you would help us
in the simple reading, commenting, looking at other
scriptures as they pertain to that which is in front of us.
We might learn by your grace and by your spirit what this
book really says. Oh, how we once thought we understood
this book. We were lost as lost can be. Now we tremble put any trust in ourselves. For you tell us as plainly as
words can speak that a man by searching cannot find out God. You have declared in numerous
places in this Bible that you can only be known by divine revelation. We gladly confess this And we
know that it is true in our own experience. You have shown us
this on many occasions. Lord, if you leave us alone,
we're hopeless and helpless. We'll take the Bible and use
it against the very purpose for which it's written. We'll use
the word of God to justify ourselves, instead of causing us to throw
down the weapons of our warfare and fall at the feet of the Lord
Jesus and beg purely and only for mercy. Lord, bless our time
this evening in your book. It is your book. We confess it
as such. Open our eyes. Give us eyes to
see and ears to hear and hearts to understand. we might truly grasp the message,
the meaning, and the purpose in all the statements that we
consider here this evening. Lord, we need your blessing.
We need your hand to be upon us, your Holy Spirit to be in our
midst, to take the things that pertain to our Lord Jesus, Show
them unto us. Help us, we pray, for Christ's
sake. Amen. All right, before we start 1
Corinthians chapter 2, if you'd flip over to the 3rd chapter
for just a moment. Keep backing up, I'll be reading
the whole chapter. Let me start at verse 20. Last
four, three verses, four verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 3. And again, the Lord knows the
thoughts of the wise that they are vain. Therefore, Let no man glory in
men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Peter
or the world or life or death or things present or things to
come, all are yours. We have the Lord Jesus. If we're
in Christ and Christ is in us, we have everything God has. Now
verse 23, and you are Christ. We belong, believers belong to
the Lord Jesus and Christ is God's. Now this becoming the people and property of our
Lord Jesus Christ, we are made so, we are made to be Christ
in four ways. The first one I mention because
of our text this morning in Jeremiah 50 and verse 20, and that is,
it is by reservation. We are reserved in Christ from
old eternity and forever in the eternity to come. It is by reservation,
by reservation. This includes election. predestination, donation, and
separation. God's people all belong to Christ. You are Christ, and Christ is
God's. Now, the second way in which
we belong to Christ is because He is our Redeemer. We're His
by redemption. He bought us at the price of
His precious blood. We belong to Him. He's purchased
us. He's our owner. We're glad to
know that. Thirdly, we belong to Christ
by regeneration, otherwise called the new birth, the new birth. This is the work of God the Holy
Spirit in the soul of the sinner by which we are raised from death
to life in Christ. Then fourthly, We belong to Christ
by spiritual relationship. Spiritual relationship. God's children are called Christ's
sheep. We're called his brethren. In
Hebrews chapter 2, for example, we're called his church and we're
called his bride. And especially is that true in
the Song of Solomon. Shulamite maiden and Solomon
is a type and picture of Christ and his church. So those are
the ways by which we belong to the Lord Jesus, and it includes
that precious statement from this morning, those whom God
reserves. Reserves. Reservation. Reservation. All right, let's
back up now to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Read the whole, let's see, how
long is the chapter? It's not long, 16 verses. Let's
read the whole chapter, see what we find in these verses. I, brethren, Paul speaking now
to the Corinthian congregation, and I, brethren, when I came
to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto
you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know
anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." The church of our day could go
back to that theology, determined not to know anything except Christ
and Him crucified. Oh, what a change that would
make. Preachers now delve into everything
except who Christ is and what He's done and why He did it and
where He is now. They're telling you how to live
a more successful life, how to do this better and that better
and the other better, how to eat, how to exercise, just on
and on, anything but Christ. anything but Christ. That's not the church of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 3, I was with you in weakness,
the apostle now referring to himself, and in fear and in much
trembling. And my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, But in demonstration
of the Spirit and of power, Paul is declaring in verse 4 that
he's helplessly dependent on God the Holy Ghost to own the
preaching of Christ in him crucified. For if he doesn't, he refuses
to use any psychological tricks or anything of that sort and
kind in order to persuade people to believe and trust the Lord
Jesus. Man has to find out sometime
or other if he's going to be anything in regard to the gospel
of Christ. Salvation is God's work from
start to finish. It is not the ability or lack
thereof in the preacher that determines the outcome. He tells these Corinthians in
verse 5 why it is that he operates in this manner, refusing to use
Enticing words, emotional speeches to get people worked up and all
the rest of that stuff. He says in verse 5 that your
faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power
of God. God doesn't keep your faith alive,
let it die. It's not from him. It's a false
faith. That's what occupies this world
scene in our generation. that your faith should not stand
in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit, we
speak wisdom among them that are perfect, those that are in
Christ, those that are justified in God's sight, those whom God
reserves, yet not the wisdom of this world, not the wisdom
of the princes of this world that come to nothing But we speak
the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which
God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of
the princes of this world knew, for had they known it, they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory. If old Pilate had really
known who the Lord Jesus really is, he'd have fell down at his
feet begging for mercy. He said to the Lord Jesus, I
have power over you to do as I will unto you. Our Lord simply
said, you have no power except that which is given you from
above to bring to pass God's purpose in the crucifixion of
his dear son on Calvary's cross. Verse 9, but as it is written,
Eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the
heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that
love Him. No man loves God apart from a
miracle of saving grace. But God has revealed them unto
us by His Spirit. For the Spirit, the Holy Spirit,
searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. And for what
man knows the things of a man except the Spirit of man which
is in him? Even so the things of God knows
no man but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the
Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that
we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. God doesn't have anything for
sale, thank you very much. It's free or it's not at all. It's always free. It's free as
far as we're concerned, but it's not free. God purchased these
blessed mercies at the cost of His Son. Verse 13, which things
also we speak not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but
which the Holy Ghost teaches, or the Holy Spirit, comparing
spiritual things with spiritual. Now listen with both ears and
both eyes to verse 14. But the natural man, man as he
is by nature, man as he is when he's born into this world the
first time. The natural man, the natural
man. The Adam man, apart from Christ,
the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God. You wonder why? Well, here we're told because
there are foolishness unto him. They don't make any sense to
him. You're telling me a man died 2,000 years ago and if I
can enter into that, he becomes my Savior and my Lord and my
Redeemer? That doesn't make any sense.
They're foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them because
they are spiritually discerned or discovered or understood.
In other words, when Adam fell in the garden, the Lord promised
him in the day that he ate of that forbidden fruit, he would
surely die. Not the next day, that day, that
instant, at that time. And yet Adam was still walking
around the next day. So how did he die? He died spiritually. He died as far as God is concerned. His understanding of divine things
were gone, completely gone. He thought you could cover sin
by putting on an apron of fig leaves. Now, the day before, he had perfect
communion and fellowship with God and was fully aware of God's
infinite wisdom of all things. God's all-knowingness, what's
called His omniscience, all of a sudden, when He partakes of
that fruit, He loses entirely all His spiritual faculties,
gone in an instant. And from that day to this, every
human being born in the human race is born spiritually dead
in trespasses and in sins. And there ain't no cure for it
except Christ and him crucified. The natural man receives not
the things of the Spirit of God. For their foolishness unto him,
neither can he know them, because they're spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual, the
person who is alive in Christ, has a new nature which is perfect
in Christ Jesus. It's his spiritual nature, the
spiritual man. Paul even calls it in Romans,
the new man. He talks about the old man and
the new man. Don't misunderstand. We're going
to come to this in just a moment. Make sure you understand this.
This old person that we've had since we were born physically
is still very much alive and remains alive until we go to
the grave or the Lord returns one or the other. But our spiritual
man We do not receive any spiritual capacity to know God, to know
anything that is spiritual, to understand any of the things
that we've read in this chapter that we've been reading in, apart
from being made alive by the grace of God when we're raised
from the dead by the Holy Spirit in the new birth. And then we
discover we have spiritual faculties. We have a spiritual nature. All
right, let's read verse 15 again. I don't think we read it yet,
maybe. But he that is spiritual judges
all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who has
known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? Now this simple, awesome declaration. But we have believers, people
who are alive in Christ spiritually, have the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ. Anybody that
wants to get up and come up here, I want you to explain this statement.
We have the mind of Christ. Sometimes I think I don't have
any mind at all. We have the mind of Christ. That's a large statement. All
right, let's go back over these things now and speak of them
briefly. First thing I would discuss with
you is for us to know that we must
carefully distinguish between our abilities by nature and our
abilities by grace. They're altogether different. They don't mix. They don't go
from one to the other. Our natural human abilities remain until we start getting
old like me and they start going downhill, you know. But our abilities
in Christ, spiritual abilities, do not degrade like all these
other things do. Worldly wisdom, as Paul spoke
of it here in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and the spiritual man are
not at all the same thing. He discounts worldly wisdom, oratory, emotional preaching,
psychological preaching, and all that stuff. He just destroys
it in those opening statements in this chapter. Now if you'll
turn for just a moment to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, let me remind you
of a verse of Scripture helps us better, I hope, to understand
how this works and how it is that it's so. For it is so, absolutely
so. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17. Words could not be more simple
than these words. Therefore, if any man be in Christ,
any person be in Christ, he is a new creature. The margin says
creation. That is, he has something about
him that he never had before. That is a spiritual nature, a
new nature. Old things are passed away. All things are become new. Now this new creation is entirely
in the spiritual part of the person. It is not in our body. It is not in my natural mind
or my natural heart nor any of my natural faculties or abilities. This is not born again. It is this new man in Christ
that is here said to be a new creation, a new creature. So
when regeneration is worked in the soul, it imparts all that
is essential to life and holiness in Christ. Let that settle. Through ignorance
and misunderstanding of the work of regeneration or the new birth,
a great many eras abound in the professing church and many believers
are disturbed and distraught by unrealistic expectations. We don't understand that we still
have this old nature and this new nature. And we do not seem
to understand that from the day that we're saved, from the moment
that God raises us from a spiritual grave to spiritual life, this
old man and this new man are at odds and they're constantly
warring and fighting against each other. If you want a good
lesson on this, go to Galatians 4 and read about Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael was a fine young man
and Abraham did his best to persuade God to let this boy be the promised
seed. God would have none of it and
things went along very smoothly until Isaac was born. Then it
all hit the fan, as we say. These two boys were at odds.
One was the promised son and one had no promise. That's how
it is in this nature that is these two natures that are a
part of every last single one of us. Let's look at a scripture or
two in regard to this new birth. Oh, let's see. Where are we?
In 2 Corinthians. Let's go to Galatians chapter
4. I believe it's the very next book of scripture, isn't it?
Galatians chapter 4. You would kindly look at verse
6 in Galatians chapter 4. And because you are sons, God
has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying,
Abba, Father. Wherefore you are no more a servant,
but a son. And if a son, then an heir of
God through Christ. Look back at verse 6, Galatians
4.6. Why did God send the Spirit of
His Son into the hearts of those that He saves and regenerates,
gives them the blessed new birth? Why? Because the book says they're
already His sons. When did they become His sons?
in the covenant of grace in old eternity. God wrote their very
name inscribed in that book. We do not become the children
of God because we come by faith to Christ. We come by faith to
Christ because we are the children of God. You probably shouldn't say this,
but it's the truth. This world is made up of children
of the devil and children of God. God's children ain't never
been children of the devil. But, make sure you add this,
you couldn't tell them apart. No. They did the same thing. They went to the same places.
They talked the same way. I mean, before Christ meets them,
we're capable of anything that any other man has ever done,
apart from God's grace in Christ. God turns us loose. There ain't
no telling what we do. But I'm telling you now, you
can't take that out of there. It says, and because you are
sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts. through the miracle of the new
birth, enabling us to cry, Father, Father, Father. Let me ask you
to turn to one other scripture on this part of our subject tonight,
Romans chapter 7. It's right back to your left. Romans chapter 7. Let me remind you of two statements
made by the Apostle Paul, both of which are clearly and
plainly declared to be in the present tense. Paul is writing
about himself in Romans 7, having been a believer and a disciple
and apostle of Christ for some virtually 20 years. Verse 14 reads, Romans 7, 14
reads, For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal sold under sin. I call your attention to this
fact. It does not say I was or used to be carnal. He says I
am carnal. Now if you'll skip over to verse
24, I'll give you another statement with the same verb. O wretched
man that I am. Not I was. If you don't know anything about
that kind of language, you've missed Christ somewhere or other.
I'm telling you the gospel brings God's children to speak of themselves
in a very self-depreciating way, just like this man does right
here. These statements are not in our
Bibles by accident. It's not some fluke. sets these words before us. Oh, wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through
Christ Jesus, our Lord. All right, the second thing about
this matter of spiritual man, the natural man, The material that we've covered
here in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 in our reading, all of these
things are so vital and important. Now let me try to draw a conclusion
from what we've just read in Romans 7 as well as Galatians
chapter 4 and verse 6 and some other places. Not a single cell
of my natural body is made holy in the new birth. Not a one. Flesh is still flesh. It's as
carnal as it ever was. God turned me loose, there's
no telling what I wouldn't do. Secondly, there's not a single
cell left in the soul of the believing sinner. that is not
made holy. Every part of our spiritual being
is made perfectly holy in the Lord Jesus Christ. God can accept
nothing less than perfection. Therefore, if we're going to
ever have it, he has to give it, and he promises to accept
what he gives, and that he does. So in the new birth, the Holy
Spirit quickens the soul into life. This gracious act is perfect,
can't be added to or taken from, it's complete, it's done one
time, and that forever, never to be repeated, never to be repeated. We can prove that from Scripture,
but our time is going to run out on us, I'm afraid, so we'll work on these other things right
quick. Third thing I'd like to address
is the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the
beautiful harmony and consistency that exists within the three.
First thing I would address to you, and I'll try to remember
it and just cite it for you. In Ephesians chapter 1 and verse
4, God is said to bless us with all spiritual blessings in Christ
Jesus before the world ever began, before man was ever made. God
had provided in Christ our surety and soon to become our substitute.
This one act on the part of God the Father in blessing us with
all spiritual blessings in Christ in the heavenly places. This
one act in God's electing grace. The second thing, in fact, if
you'll turn right here in 1 Corinthians, in my Bible it's all on the same
page. Chapter 1, verse 29, 30, and 31. The one act of God the Son in
redeeming grace is right here in this statement, particularly
verse 30, but let me read the reason I read the statement in
front of it and after it is because of what it insists on. God insists
that in everything that He does in grace, no flesh should glory in His
presence. Verse 29, that no flesh should
glory in God's presence. Verse 31, that according as it's
written, he that glories, let him glory in the Lord. This Christianity that makes
people proud as peacocks has missed something somewhere. Here's
what they've missed. We're not careful, we'll miss
it. That's what's sandwiched between these two statements.
Verse 30, But of Him, of God, are you in Christ Jesus? How
did you get to be in Christ? God put me in Christ way back
in old eternity. God, of God are you in Christ
Jesus? Christ Jesus who of God is made
unto us. righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. Christ is our wisdom. Christ
is our only righteousness. Christ is our sanctification
and our redemption. But according as it is written,
he that glories, let him glory in the Lord. And the one act
of God the Holy Ghost in regenerating grace in the new birth is covered
in so many places in our Bibles, I take it that you're familiar
with them. You can find it in several verses of John chapter
3. We just read it in 2 Corinthians
5, 17. You can read it in Titus chapter
3, where it's called regeneration. The point being that between
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they have perfect
equality in nature and in essence, and that perfection spills over
into their covenant characters and offices so that they are
ever one God in three persons, bringing to pass this holy, perfect
will. Now the danger for us is of not
seeing and remembering these blessed things. And the reason
it's dangerous is because it causes us to look in ourselves
for improvement, for more holiness, for more sanctification. And
that is the place of all places. You must never look for such
things. They aren't there. They are not
there. What causes this mistaken view? oneself. Unhumbled pride, the false doctrine of progressive
sanctification. The Lord's children are supposed
to get holier and holier and holier, and then when they're
just so full of holiness they can't stay in this world anymore,
they're going to leave. That's pure hogwash. There's no such thing as progressive
sanctification. One of the major causes is because
we do not know the plague of sin that is in our heart. Remember Romans 7, O wretched man that I am. This wonderful act of saving
grace faith in Christ is upon his person, his blood, his righteousness. Christ is our joy. We live upon
Christ for complete justification and salvation. It's not what
I feel, but it is what Christ is. It is not a work done in
me, but the work of Christ done for me that should occupy our
attention. Faith, the kind that saves a
soul, hangs all the glory upon the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, is there anyone?